


inhale (in hell, there's heaven)

by theformerone



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Everybody Lives, Except Cersei, F/M, Fluff, Mentioned oc - Freeform, Wish Fulfillment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-03-13 04:03:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18933016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theformerone/pseuds/theformerone
Summary: "So you're going home," Gendry hedges."To see my niece," she says, and the little hope that flared in Gendry's chest stands fast against the storm of her half-answer. "To kick Sansa in the shin for naming her 'Edye'."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title snatched from Solo by Frank Ocean

She appears from nowhere, that same way she did in the wars. He's surprised he doesn't jump. Then again, he's spent nearly the same number of years roaming as she has, though with less instruction on how to kill the living.

"Yes, milady?" 

He doesn't know how he knows. Maybe the smell of her hasn't changed, or the way that she doesn't seem to breathe when she's managed to sneak up on her prey. His shoulder ticks up when she lays her Needle on it, and Gendry would laugh if his stomach wasn't ready to tug itself out of his mouth. 

"I hated it then," she says, almost blithely, like she isn't threatening the Lord of Storm's End, like she isn't the Stark with No Name, "when you called me a 'lady'. Do you remember?" 

Gendry wonders if he should ask the Mother for patience. 

"I do," he replies, rolling his shoulders. "But it's what you were. What you are, even now." 

He swears he can almost see the way she lifts one eyebrow, her little mouth all wry and knowing, her wrist ready to flick and dive the edge of her blade into his throat or otherwise into the air to slice a bit of dust in half. 

"That's why you're back, I reckon. Because you're a lady, and ladies have duties."

She was still a Stark of Winterfell. And the Queen in the North had just borne her first child: Edye Stark, first of her name, daughter of the Red Wolf, and Princess in the North. Gendry was sure that the King of Westeros and the Snow Beyond the Wall would be making similar journeys. He doubted they would miss the birth of a new wolf pup for anything, considering how thoroughly their family had been torn apart. 

He feels her weapon lift off his shoulder, and he hears the familiar sound of it being sheathed. 

It had taken time for the sting of her rejection to stop smarting him. It had seemed like the end of the world at the time; forging Valyrian steel daggers, making love, nearly dying. But in the years that have passed since, Gendry's gotten a tick smarter. 

Asking an eighteen year old like Arya to marry him had been a mistake. She was of good age for the contract in terms of build, but the only things she had ever known were death and running. She had been a child when the two of them had tried to walk to the Wall together. Gendry had been a child, too, though he didn't think it then. 

Becoming lord of Storm's End had changed him. Made him grow in ways he hadn't considered before. Gendry lacked a lord's education, and House Baratheon lacked bannermen now that the wars had depleted the number of fighting men in the world. But in this new age of a council choosing kings, Gendry had not been left alone to flounder. 

It was Sansa of all people, that began by writing to him. Laying out firm instructions for how to establish himself as the leader of his people, different from his father and his uncles. The power vacuum that opened up in the Stormlands when Robert and his two brothers were all dead had lead to a number of minor insurrections and attempts to claim power, either quelled by the vicious storms that made the people more meek, or the lack of steady food and funds coming into the land, which made the people restless. 

The North had once been in such a predicament. Sansa's advice was for Gendry to trust his instincts. He had once been just like his people; poor, hungry, and desperate. He knew intuitively what their needs were. Sansa advised him to surround himself by people that he trusted, and to write to her if he ever needed assistance. 

So Gendry called for an audience with Lord Selwyn Tarth, who -after receiving a letter from his daughter that praised Gendry both as a smith and as a good man- happily rode to Storm's End to advise his new lord. 

Selwyn was a good humored and good tempered man, who somehow managed to treat Gendry both like his beloved grandson and his superior. And once Selwyn came, then did the Wyldes, the Swann's, the Errol's, the Connington's, Carron's, and the Morrigen's. They did not ride to swear their fealty to him, as that had already been done. Now they came to tell him what their people needed. 

With no choice except rising to the occasion, Gendry rolled up his sleeves and attacked the great number of duties that being a landed lord entailed with all the aggression and tenacity he used to approach forging weapons with. His handwriting was still a kind of chicken-scratch that Sansa mercilessly mocked and Selwyn smiled over ("Like a schoolboy's!"), but he learned. 

When he looked up again, four years had passed, Sansa was one of his dearest friends, Selwyn his closest advisor, and Arya was in Storm's End. From nowhere.

"Bit out of your way, isn't it?" he asks as he turns in his seat. "You're too far south to see your sister - ,"

She's smiling at him. That way that she did then, that day, when he asked her. And all the times before, when he made her laugh, and she didn't expect it. 

She's different, of course. But then, so is he. His hair is a touch longer, and he's got a bit of a beard. Her hair is pulled back in a braided bun, and her clothes are looser, in the style of Dornishmen, though she is still wrapped in the blacks and greys of her house. 

There's also the question of the direwolf at her side. 

"You got a dog."

Then the laugh comes out. Clear and bright as day, bright as the moon on the nights when Storm's End lives up to her namesake, and the moon's eye is the only light shining through rain and wind. 

"The dog got me, actually," she says, dropping her hand to rest it on the direwolf's head. The massive thing leans into her touch, whuffing a little bit as she scratches its ears. "We were separated at birth."

Gendry snorts. 

"That wouldn't surprise me at all." 

"No?" 

Arya tilts her head at him, still armed to the teeth, still scratching the fur of a wild animal as if it's a toothless pet. Still herself, after all this time. She ought to be twenty-two about now. It shows. She hasn't gotten much taller, but her face has changed. There's a little scar on her chin, and one of her eyebrows has a bit of hair missing in the middle, the way it refuses to grow back once the skin beneath it has been cut. 

She's got more muscle on her, too. Through the thinner sleeves of her blue tunic, he can tell her arms are thicker, and he can guess her thighs are, too. Four years on a boat sailing to the end of the world would put ten pounds of muscle on anyone. But it looks good on her. Then again, everything does. 

"I couldn't go back to Sansa without a present," she says, rolling her eyes. "You know how she is."

Gendry -whose letter exchanges with Sansa made her probably his dearest friend, and in which letters, he was told of her pregnancy, at which time, he promptly had a nice blanket stitched for the then unborn babe, along with thirty lemon cakes to be sent to the Queen in the North as a 'gesture of goodwill'- knows exactly what Arya means.

Sansa would hardly demand a present from anyone, but Arya's absence from Winterfell along with Jon's stationing beyond the wall and Bran becoming king had left her an isolated wolf when she had only just started to get used to being part of a pack again.

"I'm sure she'll like your dog just fine." 

Arya snorts, then drops down to one knee. Her direwolf sits beside her almost immediately, as if knowing that Arya's hands will come to her round looking belly. 

"She's a direwolf," she says smartly. "Sansa already knows her. She had one, too, when she was younger. We all did. This here is Nymeria. And I'm not bringing her to Sansa. I'm bringing a pup for the princess." 

Gendry hardly has time to put together that Arya named a  _direwolf_ after a  _witch queen_ before he realizes that Arya is planning on giving a  _direwolf pup_ to an  _infant._

"Stop making that face," Arya says, giving Nymeria an ear rub that makes the beast's tongue loll out in delight. "I had a direwolf pup when I was a girl. It's a proud Stark tradition. It builds character."

"That and an early tolerance for pain, maybe." 

Nymeria huffs out a sound that almost could be a laugh, but Arya rolls her eyes at him and rises back to her feet. 

"I need an escort. To Winterfell."

Gendry crosses his arms over is chest. Tries not to feel good about himself by the way Arya's eyes momentarily track the movement. 

"You've never needed someone to hold your hand and help you cross the road, Lady No Name," he replies. "You know how to follow the Kingsroad. What happened to your Stark ships? Did they sail off the edge of the world?" 

Arya puts her hands on her hips and leans her weight to one side. 

"The world is round, Gendry," she returns, "and I sent my ships back north years ago." 

"What for?"

Her eyes go a little soft, and she crosses to him. She pulls out a chair, but instead of sitting on it, she hikes a leg up and sits on the table. Plants her bum right on a piece of parchment that Gendry was about to use to write a letter to her sister, telling her that he would be riding north to meet the new little princess when time allowed.

The Stormlands had taken the better portion of the last four years to stabilize. It had been good timing on Sansa's part to have her daughter now of all times, when Westeros at large was settling into peace. The smallfolk had, had their fill of conflict. They wanted bread and work, and to be able to put their faith in something without worrying that their fields would be burnt the next time someone claimed to be the King of the Andals and the First Men. 

 "Exile builds character."

She unsheathes her dagger, the one he made for her, and she flips it in her hand. She catches it by the hilt again, then vaults it into the air, and catches it with her opposing hand. 

"I thought that," she continues. "I did a lot of my growing up away from Winterfell. On the Kingsroad. In Braavos. In the far west. So far west I came back east again." 

She grins as she says it, and catches her dagger by the blade. It doesn't cut her hand. She's too skilled for that, knows exactly how much pressure to use without making herself bleed unnecessarily. 

"Learned good lessons, I take it?" 

"All lessons are just lessons," Arya replies, tilting her head to look at him. This close, he can see a second braid under her bun, starting on one side, and pinned to the other. There's also a ring, shiny and silver, high on the shell of her ear. "But a lone wolf is a lone wolf if it's in the wild or it's been broken. And lone wolves die alone." 

"So you're going home," Gendry hedges. 

"To see my niece," she says, and the little hope that flared in Gendry's chest stands fast against the storm of her half-answer. "To kick Sansa in the shin for naming her 'Edye'." 

"I think it's a fine name." 

Arya cocks her head at him. 

"You thought making a bull shaped helmet was a good idea."

He chuckles in spite of himself, and Arya's posture loosens a touch more. 

"Starks weren't meant to be without one another," she says. "My father was right about that. It was no mistake to leave. I'm glad I did it. But now that the North is free, and will stay free, there needs to be more than one Stark in Winterfell."

"To be fair," he interrupts. "There are three. Technically." 

"All Edye can do is spit on herself," Arya retorts. "And Sansa's Reed husband will be a Stark when I look on him and say so."

Gendry raises his brows. Arya huffs out a breath and visibly tames her temper. Her thumb still roves over the pommel of her dagger, something Gendry would call a nervous habit if Arya wasn't Arya. 

He had thought it was a decent match, himself. The Reeds had been the ones to help protect Bran and Rickon, a service that could not be unrewarded in Sansa's eyes. Howland Reed had been a dear friend to Eddard Stark, whom Edye took her name from. And Torrhen Reed seemed a good, and sensitive man from Sansa's letters. A cousin of Meera's, like Sansa in age, but with a surprisingly tender disposition. 

He was not so soft that the winter would kill him, for Torrhen was a man of the Neck. But he was like a fruit that bloomed in winter, despite all odds. He complemented his wife's learned steel and iron defense of the people with his own even temper and flexible nature. Where Sansa was firm, Torrhen was more willing to compromise. He was both her husband, and in a way, her Hand. She was ruled as queen, and he was recognized as a prince. And the people loved him because he loved their Queen in the North. 

"Will you escort me northward or not, Lord Baratheon?" 

There's an edge to her voice that says her patience has run thin, and for the first time, Gendry realizes that Arya is nervous. 

"I can spare a few good men to escort you, Your Highness. Let me send word - ," 

"You will take me, Lord Baratheon," Arya says, the dagger he made for her suddenly finding itself wedged Gendry's letter to her sister. "Or no one." 

Gendry looks up at her. 

"That is a very important piece of paper."

Arya purses her lips together tightly, like she's a moment away from ripping her dagger out of the wood and fluttering noiselessly back out of Gendry's life, direwolf and all. 

"If you're turning me down because I refused you - ," 

Gendry nearly belts out a laugh, and Arya's mouth hangs open on her sentence in confusion. 

"Upset because you didn't marry me?" he asks, forcing his words through his laughter. "You think I would've known what to do with you for a wife? Killing anyone that didn't swear fealty to me, carving up rapists and bandits like a mercenary, strolling about with a direwolf for a pet?"

His laughter dies down, and Gendry rubs at the hair of his beard, chuckling still. 

"I hardly knew how to sign my name when I was made Lord Baratheon. All I would've done to you was made you pregnant and miserable then."

And it's true. Arya would've taken immediately to ruling the Stormlands because of her birth as a Stark. She would've whipped the lords and ladies of the region into shape much faster than Gendry did, with his cramped handwriting and his lack of good manners. Arya would have been the perfect way to smoothen that transition. But she would have hated it.

The primness of being a lady was something she resented, and she also loathed the constraints of the politics. If she had been Lady of Winterfell when she killed the Freys - well, maybe that isn't a good example. But still. She couldn't move as freely as a lady. 

Her going back to Winterfell must have been done on the condition that she would never be Sansa's heir. Perhaps that's why she was going home in the first place. Because Sansa had given them a Princess in the North, and now Arya was free to be wild in her homelands where she belonged. 

"And now?" she asks. 

She's looking at him now, those big eyes of hers deceptively full of nothing. No expectation. No hope. No fear. 

Gendry shrugs. 

"I could still make you pregnant, but I reckon that isn't what you've come for."

And there it is again, the little smile on her face that always made walking northward a bit less draining or the dim lights of Winterfell more cheery. 

"I'm going North to pay my respects to your sister and your niece. I don't mind taking you and your direwolf with me, Princess No Name," he says, leaning back in his seat and smiling back at her. "Provided you don't kill anyone on the way."

Arya huffs out a laugh and sheaths her dagger. There's the sound of claws clicking on the floor, and then Nymeria is under the table, laying down her massive head on one of Gendry's thighs. 

"She can't eat anyone either," he adds, hesitantly putting his hand in front of the direwolf's muzzle for her to sniff. 

"No promises," Arya replies. "Nym likes fresh meat. And I never say no to killing wicked men." 

"Didn't you know?" Nymeria sniffs his fingers, then gives them a casual lick. She wiggles her muzzle under his hand, until his palm is far enough back on her head to scratch her ears. He obliges. "There are no wicked men in Storm's End." 

Arya's mouth quirks up, and fast as nothing but her could be, she's crouching in front of him, her eyes bright and dangerous. Gendry has always been a moth to this winter born flame. There was just something about the Stark women. He understood Torrhen's adoration long before he even met the man. 

"No wicked men," she repeats, and then her thumb is on his bottom lip, tugging it down just slightly to reveal his bottom row of teeth. The pad of her thumb is calloused, and Gendry can see the pale line of the new scar on her eyebrow. "Just bastards. And I like them better, anyway." 

When Arya pushes forward and kisses him, she laughs when she hears him say, "You always have."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YES this is gendrya wish fulfillment with added nymeria on the side. i want what i want! someone tell george to bring nym back home damnit! YES i gave arya her season 1 hairstyle! i miss it! it was cute! and it symbolizes her HEROE'S Return HOME.
> 
> thank you for reading, and i'm proud of you for finishing the dumpster fire that was season 8. catch me out here writing more wish fulfillment for gendrya, arya finding nym and nym NOT refusing to join her (because FUCK d&d and their desperation to hurt the starks and destroy the pack ffs) and sansa starting a 12 generations long matriarchy in the north. also, dany ..... isn't dead. you're welcome! :)


	2. toothpick

She reaches forward, and flicks her middle finger against the head of his hammer. As she leans back, she asks, "Haven't you named it yet?"

Arya settles her hand on Nymeria's head, and gives her a scratch behind the ears. The pregnant direwolf opens one eye to look up at her partner, then over at Gendry. 

He hadn't thought it prudent to take a number of retainers with them on their way. Gendry had gotten the feeling that a wild animal that was heavily pregnant under her thick tufts of fur would prefer riding in a carriage, however small. Arya had called him a simpleton when he brought the idea up to her, but she had also smiled at him. Being kind to the wolf clearly was a mark in his favor. 

Not that he needed it. Not really. 

"I named it ages ago," he replies, not looking up at her. Whittling was a habit he had picked up Selwyn. There were plenty of trees in the Stormlands, and it was a stately habit for a man of his rank. Besides, it was good for a lord to have something to do with his hands. It steadied you, reminded you of the world you were in. And besides, Gendry didn't get much time to spend in the forge now that he was a lord. His whittling, he could take anywhere. "No one's bothered to ask."

There wasn't much point. Naming a weapon was a superstition in some parts; if you didn't name it, you were giving it a chance to turn on you. The superstition was both silly and sacred to Gendry; as someone who made weapons, he understood more than anyone the energy that went into their making. They weren't alive per se, but they were extensions of the people that used them. Naming them seemed reasonable when you thought about it that way. 

"Did you name your knife?" he asks 

Arya snorts. 

"Which one?" 

Gendry can't help but laugh a bit himself. 

Arya wasn't armed to the teeth by any means of the word. She travelled lightly, even when she had sailed across the world. But apparently she had built quite a collection of slim knives; ones that she had sent back to her sister in the North attached to the legs of the strong ravens that carried letters between the Stark sisters. 

After the Battle of Winterfell, the Stark with No Name had decided her sister should never be unarmed. According to Sansa, it had led to quite the collection. 

"All of them," he replies. "Do you remember them all?"

Arya tilts her head, her big brown eyes lifting as she considers it. 

"I only name the ones that matter," she says, her gaze dropping back down to land on Gendry. "So yes."

"Oh?" Gendry asks, tilting his eyes up. He blows a few shavings off the direwolf he's carving. It's another little gift for Edye. He'll have it polished when he's finished. He had thought it would be a nicer present than the more impersonal ones that a 'state visit' such as this one allowed. 

Arya came bearing herself and direwolf pups for the North. Gendry came with fine gifts made from the strong trees that forested the north and the south of his lands; a fine cradle, a stag shaped rockinghorse, a rocking chair for Sansa with the Stark sigil and weirwood trees carved into its every surface, and lemon cakes with raspberry jam. 

"The dagger I made for you?" he asks. 

Arya lifts an eyebrow, as if it had completely slipped her mind that Gendry had ever forged her anything, much less a knife that had ended a war with the frozen undead. 

The carriage rolls along on its rocking pace. Nymeria huffs and settles her large head on her paws. Arya's thrown a blanket over the direwolf to keep her warm, but Nym puts off enough body heat to keep the three of them plenty warm for the trek North. 

"Of course," she says. "But other people have come up with better."

That makes him snort, so Gendry asks, "Like what?"

Arya sucks her teeth and leans her head back against the wall behind her. It exposes the barest bit of her throat, usually hidden by the severe leather folds of her armor. She's kept her throat covered like Northern women since he saw her last. And though he's happy to see that some parts of her haven't changed, the little piece of skin that Gendry sees is a piece he wants to put his teeth on. 

"Winter's Bane," she says, wrinkling her nose as she says it. "Purifier, Night's End, Wolf's Tooth, Icebane, Silence, Night Slayer, Seethe."

"I like that one," Gendry adds. " _'Seethe'_ fits it well, I think."

"You would," she replies, tilting her head at him like he's her fool. And maybe he is. "Those are all the names my crew came up with. 'Seethe' was popular with the men."

"And which name did you prefer, Lady Stark?"

Arya purses her little lips at him in that way that she does, then relaxes her mouth into a smile as she says, "Toothpick."

And that sets Gendry laughing, because  _of course_ she named the knife that ended an unwinnable battle something as simple and ridiculous as 'Toothpick'. 

She lifts a hand from her lap to pull the dagger out from where it's been sheathed at her thigh. Nym flicks her ears when she hears the metal whisper against its case, but otherwise, doesn't look up. Arya tests the balance of the knife, before handing it, handle first, to Gendry. 

"I always thought boys were tits for naming their swords things like Oathkeeper and Hearteater and Widow's Wail," she says, wrinkling her nose. "Naming a weapon after something you want it to do is like asking it to disappoint you. You have to name it after what it _is_."

Like her Needle; light, small, and just feminine enough for you to pass it over. And when you stopped paying attention to it, that was when it stung you. That was Arya all over. 

Toothpick was much the same; easily hidden, and there precisely when you needed it. 

"My father had a sword called Ice," she says, eyes darting out the little window so she can give herself some privacy with the memory. Gendry looks down at the direwolf taking shape in his hands, and works on the slope of its back. A nice set of a mama wolf and a pup would be nice for little Edye to play with when she was a touch older, and less likely to gum on them. 

"It was the greatsword of House Stark," she continues, shutting her eyes for a moment. "I don't think it was named Ice just because of the cold. Ice can cut. Ice can melt. It's adaptable. It changed, based on the hand it was passed to. A sword used for the same purpose by different Starks through the generations. The one thing they all had in common was their blood and the North. The cold. The snow. The ice."

A sword that changed and stayed the same, the way ice thawed and froze again in the winter. The sword never took a different shape when it was still in its first form, but Gendry knows that different men can hold the same sword with different hands. 

Her reasoning is sound; a man can break an oath with a sword called Oathkeeper. But a Stark can only be a Stark when handling Ice. 

"Maybe we should have you make us a new one, Lord Baratheon," Arya says, quirking an eyebrow. "Could you be commissioned back into your forge?" 

Gendry rubs a bit at his chin and blows some wood shavings away from his carving. He runs his thumb over the firm triangles of the direwolf's mane. 

"Like I'd take your money, Lady Stark."

And he really wouldn't. Not Arya's, or Sansa's, for that matter. 

It wasn't as if forging a sword was something one forgot how to do. Even if Gendry was a few years out of practice, he was sure that if he walked into the forges his own blacksmiths kept, he'd feel his way back into the work in little time at all. 

"A new greatsword for House Stark," he muses. "What do you s'pose this one would be called?"

Arya shrugs. 

"That's for Sansa to decide, though I hardly trust her naming anything after what she did to poor Edye."

Gendry snorts. 

"You'll have to let that one go eventually. She's named after your father."

Arya rolls her eyes. 

"Like 'Eddard' is a good name either. My uncles and my aunt got the reasonable names, like my grandparents ran out of steam by the time they had their middle child."

Even as she says it, she's smiling, and that's something that makes Gendry feel lighter. She had held her father's execution in her heart like a wound left to fester there, and he had never thought her wrong for it. Gendry knows he can't even imagine what it must have been like to have been there, to have someone turn his face away, when someone he loved, someone who loved him, was murdered in the public square. 

But now she can tease her father's ghost without flinching; Arya's made peace with her dead on her travels, and it shows. 

"What's your hammer's name, Gendry?"

The question comes back, and Gendry's been waiting for it to circle back around. He doesn't want to compare her to a dog with a bone, but well. Arya was the stubbornest sort. The kind to go around the world to find herself then show up in Gendry's home asking for a lift North, as if she didn't already know he was headed there. And Gendry is absolutely sure Arya knew he had already been on his way. 

So he levels her with a look and says, "Arya." 

She rolls her eyes. 

"Come on, I've told you Toothpick's name even though I knew you'd think it was stupid - ,"

"My hammer's name is Arya." 

For the first time since she appeared again, like a flicker in his life, he's surprised her. 

"Your Needle," he says, "is named for what it is. Light, easy to ignore, but dangerous if you forget where to put it. Toothpick is small and easy to carry, but stick it in the right place, and you'll bleed."

"And Arya is?" 

Something about the way she sits tells him she's holding down her own curiosity, her own excitement. Gendry sets the direwolf being carved free from Stormland pine and his whittling knife to look at her. 

When he shifts, Nymeria doesn't even lift her head, and Gendry takes that for the clear compliment he is. He leans forward, reaching his hand out to cup her cheek, to slide a thumb down her chin, until the whole weight of his palm is against the side of her throat, tapping against the smooth exposed skin he still can't not think about putting his mouth on.

"Like a hammer to the face."

She grins like the wolf she is, and she's the one to bite him first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter happened PURELY because of that one fan that asked joe dempsie what gendry named his hammer, and he didn't have an answer, so a fan shouted "ARYA" and joe was like .... "honestly ya ur right" 
> 
> what would y'all name house stark's new greatsword? i have my own ideas, but i wanna hear yours ~


End file.
